Customer Reviews

Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory

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Ever since the national curriculum was introduced into English schools, its emphasis on 1688 and the "Glorious Revolution" of the Dutch William of Orange and Mary, daughter of James II as a key focus puzzled me. I failed to see this dynastic change as having the political significance the writers of the curriculum seemed to suggest. 1603, 1642, 1649, even 1660 seemed much more important in "the making of the United Kingdom". 1688 is very much more of the same.... now however this view has been vindicated in the book "Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory , by Lisa Jardine.
Its early sections show clearly how 1688 was a Dutch invasion for regime change, but any political and (largely cultural) changes resulting from it had already taken place, earlier in the century. The invasion was a result of change, not a cause of change itself. It was barely even regime change, given the close claims of William & Mary to the English throne themselves. Furthermore, it is argued that England then had a collective act of 'amnesia' to forget how the country was so easily invaded and instead to turn it into an English victory in which (Whig) defenders of liberty got the Dutch to do their (and God's) bidding. The Dutchness of this 'revolution' - and certainly the extent to which it was backed by a foreign invasion force of massive size - has been all but erased from English history. This is the most successful part of the work.
After an effective account of 1688, Jardine then leaves the political to explore the artistic, architectural and scientific links that were already in place between the Netherlands and England by 1688. These were indeed amazingly widespread. much more than I had realised. This is knowledgeable and very well illustrated, if a little too dry, pure "history of art" focused for me. It, like much of the work, is also perhaps a little too centred on the experience and evidence of one particular family, the Dutch Huygens household.
The final section looks at the economic ties. This is the least satisfying part of the work. Too little is said of the reasons why, despite the connections argued for in the book, Anglo-Dutch trade remains competitive to the point of war and massacres of rival trade posts.
Equally, too little emphasis is made on reasons for the series of wars in mid century between the two, or (despite what is said on the final page) on why the Netherlands declined as England's fortunes grew. Just like those of Scotland in the same period..... In fact Anglo-Dutch relations and connections and links at the time seem to uncannily mirror those of Anglo-Scottish.
Only the Netherlands escaped complete assimilation with England. Now there's a theme for another book....

Lisa Jardine's elegant and thought-provoking new book, Going Dutch, offers a sweeping chronicle of the intellectual, political, and cultural links forged between England and the Netherlands during the seventeenth century. Deftly tracing the movements of people and ideas in fields ranging from monetary policy to garden design, Jardine evokes a dialogue of civilizations in which attitudes on both sides of the Anglo-Dutch divide developed in tandem.

But Jardine also has a bigger and bolder agenda in Going Dutch: she wants to change the very way that history is written. Instead of the traditional nation-by-nation treatment, Jardine proposes a more global view that embraces border crossings as a fact of life. Drawing on her own roots as the grandchild of Polish immigrants, she sees the past much in the way that most of us experience the present--as a "kaleidoscope of colliding influences."

From this perspective, Jardine's granular examinations of specific moments in Anglo-Dutch relations are case studies in her larger world view. At one moment, for instance, she takes us deep into the life of Alexander Bruce, a founding member of England's Royal Society and co-inventor, with Dutch-born Christiaan Huygens, of a pendulum clock that could accurately report a ship's position at sea. We learn about Bruce's marriage to a Dutch woman, his international lifestyle, and the intricate personal and professional networks that facilitated his collaboration with Huygens. The next moment, we find ourselves immersed in Anglo-Dutch competition in the New World--competition unwittingly fostered by the navigational advances Bruce and Huygens had made possible.

Anyone with a lively interest in seventeenth century European history will find Going Dutch a pleasure to read. I recommend it whole-heartedly.

--Jonathan Lopez, author of The Man Who Made Vermeers

I enjoyed the first 100 pages of this book, as it gave a nice introduction for me as a general reader to the context of the "Glorious Revolution". But once Jardine began to focus on the Huygens family, who were powerful servants of the House of Orange, but really rather dull people, it became unbearable to read.

Her description of the settlement of New Netherland and specifically New Amsterdam (New York City) was better, but disconcerting when she referred to Peter Minuit, the original leader of the Dutch colonists as "Paul Minuit". A few pages earlier she discussed John Winthrop, Jr., the then governor of Connecticut, and referred to him as the son of John Winthrop senior "the founder of ... Jamestown", which seems a rather glaring error, since Winthrop senior was actually a founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, not Jamestown. (I have just read Sarah Vowell's entertaining book of essays The Wordy Shipmates and been fascinated by John Winthrop senior's remarkable skill in leading the quarreling English.)

These kinds of obvious errors should have been caught by the American editor of the book, if not the British one. It made me wonder how accurate Jardine is in her argument about the plundering of the Dutch by the English.

This is an awkwardly written and deceptively sub-titled book whose cover promises much more that the book delivers.

The book is really about the Dutch Huygens family, their experiences and observations, especially in contacts and cultural exchanges between England and the Netherlands. But some editor or sales promoter tried to jazz up the product with a Vermeer painting on the cover, a misleading subtitle about England "plundering" Holland's glory. and lots of reproductions of Dutch art throughout the book. The text of the book makes it clear that there was no plundering at all, only sharing across the narrow sea, which is much less exciting.

The writing is awkward and annoying. Overly long sentences and extended clauses make for rough going within paragraphs while the transitions between paragraphs are often strained as an attempt is made to organize the book by cultural topics (paintings, music, gardens, etc.) rather than chronologically and by turning (and returning) to various members of the Huygens family as the principal observers and reporters about each.

A very disappointing book.

Lisa Jardine's general purpose is to show that England stole from, copied, imitated and was influenced by the Netherlands during the seventeenth century. From state formation to garden-design, England learned from the Dutch. Thus, Jardine suggests, England isn't wholly English, since so much of its culture is imported, originally foreign, or hybrid.

This will surprise people that have very little background in history, but most of us should know that the English, like all societies, learned from or were influenced by many people. Jardine never tells us, nor even asks, whether Dutch influence was more profound on the English than French, Italian, Scottish, Irish, Turkish, American, Spanish, or Indian culture was, though of course all were important in various ways. Nor does she have a very illuminating picture of what the Netherlands actually are - she implies that this rapidly changing and heterogenous society was monolithic. I could go on, but suffice it to say that Jardine's story is a bit simple-minded and naive. Readers with much background in 17th century history won't learn much, and would do better looking over her footnotes and simply reading those books instead. Jardine is a professor of history, but this book, like many of her others, in fact, reveal very little if any original research. This book simply doesn't tell the world anything that wasn't already available elsewhere.

For those interested in the topics explored here, I would recommend instead Jan de Vries' new synthesis of Dutch and European economic growth, The Industrious Revolution. Tulipmania by Anne Goldgar is a very interesting study of flowers and collecting that reveals much about 17th century Dutch culture, and Jonathan Israel has written many of the best English-language studies of the Netherlands. Those books are thought-provoking and original. Jardine's work is not.

This book examines the interaction between English and Dutch culture in the 17th century, and one of its themes is that these relations were were very close long before the reign of William and Mary; and in fact Lisa Jardine ends her story around 1690, and deals hardly at all with the Dutch influence in England after that time.

She begins with the political background. In the first chapter we are told of the sheer scale of the fleet and army with which William of Orange invaded England in 1688 and reminds us that London experienced an occupation by Dutch troops for the next two years. Lisa Jardine shows how meticulously the invasion had been planned, especially with regard to the propaganda which accompanied it, much of it under the guidance of Gilbert Burnet. This managed to convey the idea that William's purpose had been to save England from a Catholic dictatorship which was alien to it; but she also makes the well-established point that it was a strategic necessity for the Dutch to prevent England cooperating again, as it had one in 1672, with Louis XIV's obvious aggressive designs against the United Provinces.

In the following chapters Lisa Jardine goes back a couple of generations to show the close dynastic relationship between the Stuarts and the House of Orange. The latter had, for the last two generations, behaved more and more like a hereditary monarchy with lavish courts, and had established dynastic links with the Stuarts: the Stadtholder Frederick Henry had married his son, the future William II, to Mary, the daughter of Charles I; William II in turn had married his son, the future William III, to Mary, the daughter of the future James II. In addition, Charles I's sister Elizabeth, after she and her husband Frederick had been driven out of Bohemia and the Palatinate, had established another sumptuous court in The Hague (Frederick being related to the House of Orange). Frederick and William II predeceased their wives by many years, in 1632 and 1650 respectively, and their widows maintained their courts separately from that of the future William III and his wife; so that English women presided over three separate courts. These all attracted English visitors and, after the victories of the parliamentary armies in England, many royalist refugees.

All this is well told, but is, at least in outline, quite well known to any layman interested in 17th century history. What is perhaps less well known is the role of the Huygens family, to whom Lisa Jardine devotes much of the book, with a degree of detail which some readers may find indigestible. The Anglophile Constantijn Huygens senior (1596 to 1687) was the foremost advisor the House of Orange for almost 50 years, while his son, also called Constantijn (1629 to 1695), was secretary to William III. As a young man the elder Huygens had lived for a while in England in the entourage of James I's Resident Ambassador to the Hague, Sir Dudley Carlton. Carlton was a great connoisseur of art, and was much involved in the art trade between England, Italy and the Low Countries. Carlton's choices shaped the tastes of both courts. Huygens himself became not only a diplomat but a great lover of painting, sculpture, music and gardening; and Lisa Jardine devotes many pages to the artistic influence he exerted through his patronage. When the Commonwealth sold off Charles I's art collection, many pieces were snapped up by the Dutch. While James I and Charles I had employed the Flemish artists Rubens and Van Dyck, Oliver Cromwell employed the Dutch artist Pieter Lely, though that painter would also work for the restored Stuarts.

Incidentally, Lisa Jardine devotes so much to the interaction of Englishmen and Flemings in Antwerp that parts of her book might well have been called `Going Flemish'. She surmises, for example, that Sir William Cavendish and other royalist exiles in Antwerp, were `doubtlessly' influenced by the neo-classical style of Rubens' house in that city to remodel their own country houses when they returned to England after the Restoration. Huygens' taste, too, both in architecture and in painting, was influenced by Rubens and in turn influenced Englishmen in the United Provinces.

There are two chapter on the gardens, often containing collections of rare flowers, of Huygens and other wealthy Dutchmen. These were admired by English visitors, and one collection of exotic plants was moved to embellish Hampton Court soon after that palace became the favourite residence of William III. Otherwise the connections made by Lisa Jardine between English and Dutch gardens are few and tenuous.

It is a different matter when we come to the connections, cooperations and rivalries between Dutch and English scientists. Here we are introduced to Christiaan Huygens, the second son of Constantijn senior, a `virtuoso' scientist and an overseas member of the Royal Society. He worked together with Sir Robert Moray and Alexander Bruce of the Royal Society on perfecting pendulum clocks. There are problems with pendulum clocks at sea, and Christaan claimed to have invented a spring-regulated clock, a claim contested by Robert Hooke, also of the Royal Society. In 1689 Christiaan established a close friendship with Newton. Hooke claimed priority over discoveries made by these two in optics and gravity. His protests were ignored at the time, and Lisa Jardine suggests that this was at least in part because he was associated with the Stuarts and such men were marginalised after the accession of William III, in favour of those who had been friends of the Orange cause.

All this cultural interaction continued even during the several times in the 17th century that England and Holland were at war, and there is in the last chapter a brief account of the Second Dutch War - mainly, I think, to show that the relations between the English and the Dutch populations in and around New Amsterdam (New York) were friendly both before and after that war.

Going Dutch is an impressionistic but compelling study of Dutch-English cultural exchange during the 17th century. Jardine begins her tale with William III's invasion of England in the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89 and frames the subsequent chapters as a backstory to this invasion, concluding that "by 1688 England and Holland were already so closely intertwined, culturally, intellectually, dynastically and politically, that the invasion was more like a merger" (349). Indeed, she argues, "the English and the Dutch share a remarkable amount in terms of outlook, fundamental beliefs, aspirations and a sense of identity" even today (357).

Like other reviewers, I found the subtitle, "How England Plundered Holland's Glory," misleading. I expected this book to be an exploration of how England and Holland competed for commerce and empire, and that's not what it is. Jardine's belated discussion of the Dutch overseas empire in Chapter 12 is one of the weakest sections of the book and, as another reviewer noted, it contains a couple of bizarre factual mistakes. Jardine's real focus is on cultural exchange among the political elite and intelligentsia; her treatment of topics such as art, garden design, and scientific innovation is engaging and persuasive. Jardine highlights the extensive cross-channel socializing, much of it centered around the court of Charles I's sister Mary, mother of William III, and the numerous English-Dutch marriages that resulted from these social contacts. I'm surprised that Jardine never explicitly points out that, even as the seventeenth-century English were "going Dutch," the Dutch were "going English."

Though the book's physical heft is daunting, it is lavishly illustrated and I found it a quick and enjoyable read.

Lisa Jardine's "Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory" is a quite extraordinary work. The subtitle is perhaps an attempt to generate a little controversy, but in reality Jardine's picture of 17th Century Anglo-Dutch relations is one of cross-fertilization in many areas (political, financial, scientific, artistic, musical, even hortocultural), to the point where the discussion of either England or the Netherlands independent of the other is somewhat meaningless. Jardine describes the Glorious Revolution of 1688 as a direct (and successful) military invasion by William of Orange, although she also says: "Because by 1688 England and Holland were already so closely intertwined, culturally, intellectually, dynastically and politically, that the invasion was more like a merger. I could wish that the author had devoted a little more space devoted to an outline of events (for example, the course of the various Anglo-Dutch Wars), but the study is fascinating anyway. Looming large in the account is the Huygens family. Although Christian, the scientist, is best remembered today, his elder brother and father, both named Constantijn, had larger roles to play at the time, both being secretaries to the Dutch Stadholders and heavily involved in diplomacy and politics and in the currents of art and music (and even horticulture). Artists such as Rubens, scientists like Robert Hooke, and other persons of note such as Christopher Wren also peolple Jardine's pages.

The book is unusually handsome, with a profusion of colored reproductions of paintings, portraits of personalities discussed in the text as well as displaying the richness of Dutch and Flemish art of the time.

Contrary to a Dutch auction, this book is at its best at the beginning, then goes downhill. The first few chapters are invigorating, and then she loses her grip on the topic, and becomes self-indulgent -- let me pour all my research into Dutch families into the book; let me tell you about Huygens vs. Hooke, etc. This is specialist stuff in a generalist book. And there are some irritating moments: Anglo-Dutch architecture has been dealt with elsewhere (so she says), so I'm not going to talk about it. Hello; we haven't read those books, we have picked up your book to tell us about this. Also, there is a huge story to be told about landscape art. Nothing. What about the Anglo-Dutch Wars?

More to the point, we lose all sense of the history long before the end -- also we never really get a good grip on the outcomes: what is the real legacy? (I personally would argue that the revolution in Dutch agriculture has probably about as much importance as Banking in the long run).

Simon Schama is better.

The illustrations are lovely (though a bit dark).

A fascinating book for those interested in Dutch, English or 17th Century history. Of late several books have examined the impact of Holland's Golden Age on world history; this one stands proudly among them.
In 1688 the Dutch invaded England with a fleet larger than the ill fated Spanish Armada a centrury before. The goal was to place a Protestant back on the throne of England -- Dutch prince William III, marrtied to Mary Stuart and both nephew and son-in-law to Charles I. Jardine clears up any confusion by revealing the close connections between the Dutch and the British dating back to the beginning of the century. In fact, many of the institutions in government and finance that we think of as British came from Holland, while the free and cooperative exchange of culture. art and ideas continued even when the two nations were at war. Finally,. a Dutch born prince and his Syuart wife became king and queen of England.
Missing in her narrative are the economic engines that drove these two nations and the entire centrury forward -- herring, beaver pelts, tobacco, slavery, porcelain. But this is a social history, not an economic one. Timothy Brook's Vermeer's Hat: The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World would make a great companion piece on this front.
Jardine amply demonstrates how freely the Dutch exchanged royal connection, culture, art, horticulture and science by following the activities of the central family in the process, the multi-talented and ever-present Huygens family, from the patriarch, poet, art conoisseur and diplomat Constantijn to the brilliant mathematician, scientist and inventor Christiaan. In the process Britain's fortunes increased as Holland's decreased, while Jardine, a British scholar, gives the Dutch their due.
Lavishly illustrated, well told.